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Loveland voters favored legal pot

New numbers show huge turnout, slim majority

By Tom Hacker Reporter-Herald Staff Writer

Posted:
11/19/2012 05:58:01 PM MST

Updated:
11/19/2012 05:58:11 PM MST

Despite saying "no" to medical marijuana two years ago, Loveland voters joined others statewide in turning out in favor of the broader state constitutional amendment legalizing possession, use and sale of marijuana.

A vote breakdown by Larimer County election officials, furnished to the Colorado Secretary of State on Monday, shows 51 percent of Loveland voters supported Amendment 64, slightly less than the statewide and countywide 55 percent vote.

And the turnout was far larger than in 2010, when 60 percent of the city's electorate voted to oust medical marijuana businesses from the city when faced with that narrower question.

A total of 44,559 votes on Nov. 6 were cast on the question within the 40 voting precincts that make up Colorado House District 51 that includes all of Loveland and just a few neighborhoods that straddle the city limit.

Tale of two elections

While Loveland voters banned medical marijuana from the city in 2010, they joined state and county majorities in supporting Amendment 64, legalizing recreational marijuana. Turnout in 2010, an off-year election, was far lower than on Nov. 6. Here is how the two election results line up:

2010, measure 2-C:

Votes cast in favor of ban: 16,620, or 61 percent of total

2012, Amendment 64:

Votes cast in favor of legalization: 22,729, or 51 percent of total

Of those, 22,729 voted to legalize pot in the state.

That result might halt the proposal by some city councilors to exempt Loveland, as the amendment provides for, from its provisions regarding the licensed sale of marijuana.

"That information is throwing a little different light on my thinking," councilor Daryle Klassen said. "You might think a bigger electorate, as that shows, would present us with more of a consensus."

Told of the city's 2012 vote tabulation, McKean pointed to differences in the two ballot questions, and said the door remains open for local control of the issue as laid out clearly in Amendment 64's language.

"Yes, it's a different election, and a different result from 2010," McKean said. "But we were looking at a different situation then."

One reason that councilors two years ago went to the expense -- about $30,000 -- of putting the medical marijuana issues before the voters was that even more expensive legal challenges would have potentially resulted from the City Council acting alone.

"This time, the measure has the express provision of allowing local entities to control what they want to do," McKean said.

Possession Legal

Amendment 64 sets the stage for a process that will result in licensing and regulation of marijuana much like liquor, with authority vested in the Colorado Department of Revenue.

Local entities will have the option of declining to license marijuana businesses, just as some U.S. communities went "dry" after the lifting of alcohol prohibition in 1933.

But possession of an ounce or less of marijuana, and cultivation of a limited number of plants, would be legal statewide.

City officials last week said a City Council study session on the issue likely would be scheduled for early next year, but McKean and Klassen, after consultation with City Manager Bill Cahill, said such a session probably would not be necessary.

"I'm not so sure that this is going to end up in a study session," Klassen said.

"But I'm probably leaning slightly toward denial (of business licenses), and opting out. The amendment has given us the option of doing that. If I felt that it would be a benefit to the city of Loveland to opt out, that's where I'd want to fall."

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